Opening SongsOP 1 - Heavenly Blue (Kalafina)Ending SongsED 1 - A/Z (SawanoHiroyuki[nzk]:mizuki)Genre: Action, Science FictionEpisodes: 12Ah, "Aldnoah Zero". This piece of shit has gotten everyone so riled up, hasn't it? Its certainly one of the better mecha animes released this year, that's for sure (at least for me, this was one of the only mecha shows I've watched this year). Despite everything that's happened, its gotten a lot of love, and a lot of hate. I can understand the mixed reviews, and since I've already seen this, I can tell you...while its not the worst thing ever, it definitely was one of THE most downhill experiences I have ever seen. Its been awhile since I've seen an anime start out so amazingly well, only to berate and deprave every episode of the originality, smart writing and intensity that the first few episodes had. The series starts off great, fantastic, phenomenal, even! Then it just goes downhill, all the way, leaving so many questions unanswered (that they're probably going to wing in season 2). Still, as a standalone season by itself, I can't actually recommend it to everyone, especially the nitpicky types. You're going to have a shit ton of questions that won't be answered.

Hey look, high school student mech pilots again! Joy!

I love Kalafina, and this only enhances that fact further. "Heavenly Blue" is the opening song, and its by Kalafina, of course. Its an amazing song with strong vocals, a powerful rhythm, and is just filled with such valor overall. So much that it makes my ears tingle with joy every time the song hits its chorus. The ending theme is less interesting. Its "A/Z" by SawanoHiroyuki[nzk]:mizuki. Its a standard slow song that almost every ending theme goes for, nothing too special here.Rating: 7.5/10Yeah there's really no going around it. Its a good mecha show, but that's it. It sure as hell could have been more, but as a standalone season one, this anime really doesn't deserve all that much. It starts off f**king great, only to go downhill as it does nothing but make more questions instead of answering old ones. The fight scenes go downhill, the cleverness in the writing goes downhill, and by the end of it all, you'll just be scratching your head. You can only ask yourself, "What the f**k happened?". I mean, its still a fun anime to watch. You've got mechs killing each other, colorful explosions, nice CG robots, and good music. Very, VERY good music for an anime. While the production quality and animations are pretty high up there, there's still a lot too much problems and questionable decisions in the entire damn thing to make me recommend it to everyone. And the characters...oh damn. It pains me to say this, but there aren't any characters that are too likable in this one. I can name 2 characters that I give a shit about, the rest are just...kind of there. The exist for the sake of existing.

Just look at all the generic soldier mechs facing off against that one, glorified, silver bastardwith the badass beam saber. Life is never fair, isn't it?

Kaizuka Inaho is another one of those poker faced high school kids that's good at everything. In a world that has been devastated by the Heaven's Fall 15 years ago and the martians that plan to claim Earth for themselves, life hasn't really been very good. Apparently though, humans on Earth have settled down while Martians look at scorn from above with their incredibly futuristic Aldnoah technology. With no reason for them to attack Earth, the Martians just continue to observe Earth, waiting for an opportunity to strike. Fortunately such an opportunity presented itself when Martian princess Asselyuem decided to go down to Earth for a peace warming session. Obviously, Martian insiders that live on Earth attack the princess, effectively killing her and presented Martians with a realistic reason for attacking Earth now, even though it was all planned by the Martians themselves. Now the Martians attack Earth with their overpowered Mechs, and now the Earth humans have to fight a war that they have little chance of winning, due to the different in their mechs. Inaho marches into the war with a training mech...what can he do?Its hard for me to recommend "Aldnoah Zero" on a whim as it is with just one season. There's really too much at stake here. Unless you just want a fun time and you forsake everything else, then yeah, you can enjoy this one, because it IS nice to see Inaho run down all these badass enemies with a shitty machine. But other than that, I'd say wait for the second season to end. Hopefully that one clears up most of the question marks.Peace.